


Bloody blooms

by AngelynMoon



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: F/M, Hanahaki Disease, myths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:08:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22535227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelynMoon/pseuds/AngelynMoon
Summary: In which Hanahaki has it's start.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	Bloody blooms

It begins with Kore, the daughter of Demeter. It begins with Kore but it does not end with her. Although it can be argued and of course is, that Kore dies and perhaps the sweet Goddess of spring does.

But from Kore's bloody bloom and tearing thorns is born a new Goddess, a Queen of darkness, the Queen of the Underworld, a Goddess that is more terrifying to anger than the husband she takes for her own.

But first it begins with a young girl, lost among beautiful and colorful flowers.

A girl who catches sight of darkness and lets herself be drawn to it, who falls in love with it's depths and rare smiles.

She wants to stay, wants to bring some color to that sorrowful and dreary dark and let that darkness make a home where her heart dwells.

Her mother drags her back, tears her from her comforting dark, back to the too bright light that was all she had ever known before.

She withers beneath it when she used to bloom.

It begins with a scent, begins with the seed of love that her darkness planted in her heart.

It grows, nourished by her growing love, her desire and hope.

It grows and spreads through her, roots planting themselves in her lungs and veins.

A seed for each emotion her darkness inspired.

Pink and red carnations bloom in and around her poor heart, pink because she cannot forget him and red because her heart is breaking with each beat it takes away from him.

Daisy flowers root themselves in her left lung because she is still so very young and innocent.

In her right lung heliotropes grow, the tiny blooms infiltrating each and every tiny cavity in their plot because for such a young thing she is devoted so in her affections, in where she had placed her heart on offer.

Ivy spreads through her veins, down her arms, up her legs, the leaves leaving their imprint from the inside out, proof of her fidelity to her chosen. 

Her hope grows snowdrops in her stomach and womb. She knows that her snowdrops will never allow anything else to bloom in their space, she is in turns devastated and relieved, for at the very least she will never be forced to carry the child of another but she will also never carry the child of her darkness.

She will have to content herself with the flower seeds he has granted her. At least there are so many of those.

Astroemeria flowers take root in her kidneys, her devotion forcing both of them to share the seeds between them.

In her poor liver the passion of her love forces bougainvillea to grow.

And with her ivy grows baby's breath for the love she refuses to end alongside helenium for the tears their separation causes, the tears that water her lovely flowers as they grow and bloom and fall from her lips and silence her tongue.

Her mother begs her father to cure her but she refuses his offers, and all his attempts against her will.

The flowers are hers to keep, hers to love.

Her lovely blooms are killing her, taking her breath and constricting her heart and its beating but they are hers and they ache so beautifully and she loves them.

She loves them so and she does not wish them gone or taken and so they remain.

They are hers, flowers that her love and his darkness gave her and she loves them so very much.

He comes to her later, her precious darkness, comes for her with yarrow in his hand as he offers both to her and she smiles, she understands what it means and so she follows after him, grabs his hand in here and tucks his offering in her hair along with each of her bloody blooms that had fallen from her lips.

While she is away her mother grows moss and sorrel in her own lungs until her daughter returns to her.

But Kore does not return to her mother.

She is Persephone no and her flowers spread their seeds to mortals, what Kore had grown willingly, what Persephone called a gift, mortals called a curse, a curse of unreturned love.

The curse of love unrequited, of refused and unacknowledged feelings that made flowers grow in a person's lungs until they killed the grower.

But mortals did not understand and mortals are not Gods and they die because they refuse to heed the warnings, refuse to love their blooms and Kore had, refuse to love the seeds their love gave them, that their own love nurtured and fed.

It was not a thing that only took one to form after all.

And when Persephone leaves her darkness to walk with her mother, her darkness places zinnia flowers and peach blossoms in little vases around his home until his wife's return brings him lilies of the valley.

And jasmine joins her bouquet of blooms that grow within her while she is away from her husband, while she is separated from her darkness by her mother's light.

But Persephone loves her flowers so very dearly.

\---

Flower meanings that aren't already in the story.

Moss- maternal love  
Sorrel- parental affection  
Yarrow- cure for a broken heart  
Zinnia- I mourn your absence  
Peach blossoms- I am your captive  
Lily of the Valley- return of happiness

A/n: so I was thinking about Hanahaki disease and I wondered where it may have started and so you have this Greek myth about its beginning.

Also that hanahaki isn't the disease oof unrequited love but something that requires two to form and grow, one to gift the seed and the other to nurture them.

Whoops.


End file.
